


You can write it on your arm

by immoral_crow



Series: Inception Bingo Fills [7]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Inception Bingo, M/M, Psychic Abilities, sensory enhancement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-03
Updated: 2016-08-03
Packaged: 2018-07-28 16:07:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7647682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/immoral_crow/pseuds/immoral_crow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Oh.” Eames slips off the wall he was perched on, lands lightly on his feet in front of Arthur. “Arthur. Darling.” He cups Arthur’s face gently, brushing the tips of his fingers over the patch of stubble on Arthur’s jaw, feeling the desperate thrum of Arthur’s pulse beneath his touch. “You never had to prove anything.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	You can write it on your arm

**Author's Note:**

> For the sensory enhancement prompt of my bingo card.

It takes months before he gets to work with Arthur again. 

Not because he’s hiding from Arthur, although he’s tempted by the thought of that to begin with, but because Arthur doesn’t seem to be working at all. 

It’s almost unheard of, and Eames has to fight his instinct to go and find Arthur, to check he’s okay. 

He throws himself into work instead, hoping to find solace in busyness, and if not that, then at least to find distraction. 

It works, for a given value of working, and so it comes as almost a shock when he walks into a warehouse in Cork for a job that he’s only doing as a favour for a mate and finds Arthur there already. 

“I’ve got a plan,” Arthur says in lieu of greeting, and Eames – who has no idea how one should greet someone you love when you haven’t seen them for seven months – takes the chair across the table from him and says “Tell me.” 

It’s not a bad plan – the woman they’re working on has a reputation based on being a psychic and Arthur’s idea to confront her with actual psychic powers in her dreams is fairly inspired. Eames just isn’t sure why he’s ended up with the mind reading powers.

“How does this even work?” he snipes as they’re waking up from practice, and Arthur rolls his eyes at him. 

“Because she expects it to,” he says, snapping the lid of the PASIV shut. “And that’s how dreams work.”

“Fine,” Eames says, channelling his inner thirteen year old. “But why does it work on _you_?” 

Arthur’s eyes widen slightly and an interesting shade of pink colours the tops of his ears. But his voice, when he speaks, is utterly calm – bored even. 

“Because _I’m_ expecting it to,” he says, the _keep up Eames_ unsaid but clearly audible. “I thought you needed the practice.”

Eames would almost put money on that being an out and out lie, but he doesn’t call Arthur on it. He goes to make him a coffee instead. 

He remembers the conversation next time they’re under, though, and this time he actively tries to hear what each of the team is thinking, with mixed success. 

Jamal, the extractor, is thinking about breakfast, for example. Eames concentrates, tries to get beyond the thoughts of if facon can ever be as good as bacon to anything underneath, but his attempts slide clear off, even though he’s sure that there are other things in Jamal’s mind beyond toast. 

Tuning into Ariadne is a jangling experience that leaves Eames backing off fast, and with a confused expression on Ariadne’s face. Architects are a different breed – he’s aware of that – but Ariadne’s thoughts are all geometric patterns and sharp edges that leave Eames feeling raw.

Arthur at least is familiar – almost as familiar to Eames as his own thoughts – and he mentally curls up in that, seeking comfort. 

Arthur’s thinking about the job, assessing and reassessing his plans, refining them more tightly with each pass of his mind. His confidence, his competence is reassuring and Eames finds himself relaxing, trying to probe deeper to see if he can be any more successful than he was with Jamal. 

He is.

Underneath the thoughts of the job, underneath a slight concern that the fabric of his suit is going at the seat (which – Eames checks carefully – it _really_ isn’t), is something more painful, more bitter-sweet than Eames had anticipated. It’s loss, he realises, or maybe that trivialises what it is. It’s mourning for a life and love well lived and dearly held, but there’s none of the sharp pain of recent loss. 

Instead there’s a steady, familiar ache of a loss Arthur’s got used to living with, a wedding ring sinking in the waves of memory, a resolution to move on. And under that – over it, _through_ it – is longing and desire and flashes of Eames’s own face. 

Eames drops the connection, but Arthur is looking up at him, his expression thoughtful, and as the others shoot themselves out in a strangely convenient bit of timing, he walks over to Eames, his hands by his sides, palms open and facing forward like he’s trying to pacify a skittish animal. 

“How’s the sensory enhancement?” he asks when he’s close enough for Eames to hear, and Eames shrugs. 

“Good enough we’ll be able to fool the mark,” he says, then looks up at Arthur, suddenly very tired of games. “But that’s not why you got me to do this.”

“No,” Arthur says, even though Eames wasn’t asking a question. “But I couldn’t think of another way that I could prove to you that…”

“Oh.” Eames slips off the wall he was perched on, lands lightly on his feet in front of Arthur. “Arthur. Darling.” He cups Arthur’s face gently, brushing the tips of his fingers over the patch of stubble on Arthur’s jaw, feeling the desperate thrum of Arthur’s pulse beneath his touch. “You never had to prove anything.”

“Really?” There’s a note of skepticism to Arthur’s voice, but Eames can understand that, can certainly forgive it. 

“Yes,” he says, unnecessarily. “Didn’t you get it? All you had to do was to _ask_.”

Arthur nods, swallowing, and Eames is careful – so careful – to keep his mind to himself. 

“So,” he tips Arthur’s face up, his hands as gentle as he can make them. “What next?” 

“We wake up,” Arthur says, because he’s nothing if not charmingly pragmatic. “The timer’s about to run out anyway and…”

“And after that?” Eames asks, and watches the way Arthur’s lips part. 

“I thought,” Arthur says, and the bravery, the determination in his voice makes Eames smile. “That we could go for dinner before we go back to the hotel.”

At the edge of Eames’s mental hearing there is a tiny voice saying _please_ , _please_ , _please_ … but Eames is nearly sure that that particular thought is his own.

“Okay,” he says, and smiles. 

Arthur returns the smile, his face splitting so wide that his cheeks are creased by dimples. 

“Okay,” he echoes and leans forward to close the last few inches between them. 

His lips are very warm, Eames thinks, and very soft, and in the last few seconds before he gives himself over to the kiss and the dream that’s collapsing around them, he is almost, nearly sure he sees a reflection of himself in the distance, blurred by age, but smiling his approval at them.


End file.
